YOUR BRAIN: Internet Addiction Disorder. Do You Have It? Find Out!

In 2013, Internet Addiction Disorder will be included in the official DSM (Diagnostic of Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), the handbook almost all mental health professionals use to help diagnose your brain when things go wrong (with it).

It seems scientists have studied our mental conditioning over the last decade or so and have concluded that Internet users may be losing brain power at a rate that could see our brains almost disappear in the next two decades.

Some of the facts they are attributing to Internet use are:

Lower attention span (lower than a goldfish).

Increased ADD

Smaller speech, memory and motor control brain areas.

Depression and social phobia.

And its no wonder – since 2000 teens screen-time has increased from 3.43 hours a day to 7 hours a day, something that would have been unheard of when many of us were kids / teens. One of the possible side effects to so much screen-time – ADHD has risen 66% in the U.S. Incidentally, reading from a printed source (books, newspapers etc) has dropped to an average of 20 minutes a day.

May we become completely catatonic if we continue to degenerate over the next couple of decades? Sometimes, we can only hope.